Latin Mass Celebrated Locally

Father Harold F. Dagle laughs at the suggestion that it's cheating to read from a Latin missal while celebrating the Tridentine Mass.

"That's not cheating," Dagle said, explaining that he remembers his Latin prayers, but is rusty on some liturgical responses in the dead language.

The Rev. Dagle, pastor of Immaculate Conception Church, should be forgiven. It had been 20 years since he or any priest in the Allentown Diocese had celebrated the Tridentine Mass.

That changed last fall when Bishop Thomas Welsh chose two diocesan churches --Immaculate Conception in Allentown and St. Paul's in Reading -- to celebrate the old Mass once a month.

The Tridentine Mass was celebrated by Catholics worldwide for four centuries. It was superseded by the new order of the Mass implemented by Pope Paul VI in 1970, although changes in the Mass -- including use of the vernacular -- started several years earlier.

Best remembered for its use of Latin, the Tridentine Mass is in other ways different from today's liturgy. The priest faced the altar -- not the people -- and his movements were different and sometimes repetitive.

For example, Dagle said, priests made the sign of the cross over the paten and chalice holding the bread and wine about 15 times before and after the consecration. Today, the priest traces the sign once.

But the biggest difference is that the people played a small role in the Tridentine Mass.

About 300 people, most from outside Immaculate Conception parish, attended the Tridentine Mass' return to the 501 Ridge Ave. church last Nov. 26. And some didn't like the difference.

"Some said, `Oh my! That was not at all to my liking,' reflecting that they were more spectators instead of participants in the Latin Mass," Dagle said.

But the absence of the people's responses was also the Tridentine Mass' strength. Some people said they missed its hushed tones and majesty and had been awaiting its return, Dagle said.

"They find the Latin Mass to be more quiet, more solemn, more devotional, more pious," Dagle said.

Others said they appreciated the Latin Mass but prefer the vernacular English because it allows them to participate.

Dagle said only a "small number" of Catholics would like to see the church return to the Tridentine Mass.

Msgr. John Seitzinger, pastor of St. Paul's, said few of the diocese's 260,000 people want the Tridentine Mass to return.

"I don't know if 1 percent of the people in the diocese want it," he said.

The Tridentine Mass is so called because it was approved at the Council of Trent, the 16th century meeting of Catholic bishops called in response to the Reformation. The new Mass was inspired by the Second Vatican Council, the 1962-65 meeting of the world's Catholic bishops convened to update church practices.

Starting in the late '60s, the church gradually phased out the Tridentine Mass. But many Catholics missed the old Mass and Pope John Paul II declared in 1984 that bishops could allow its return to their dioceses.

Welsh asked Dagle to allow Immaculate Conception to be one of two churches where the Tridentine Mass would be celebrated.

"It came to be here because Bishop Welsh received some requests for a Latin Mass to happen in the diocese," Dagle said.

Dagle said he thinks Welsh chose Immaculate Conception because the church can seat up to 650 people and its age lent itself to the ancient liturgy. The church was founded in 1857 by Philadelphia Bishop John Neumann, now a church saint, and is the national shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Dagle's ability to speak Latin also was a factor. When Dagle was ordained in 1959, students at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Bala, Montgomery County, were required to study four years of Latin and Greek, a year of Hebrew and years of the Romance languages.

"Our textbooks in theology were in Latin," Dagle said.

Catholic seminaries dropped the heavy concentration in Latin in the 1970s.

Priests usually commit the Mass to memory and Dagle said, "Some (Latin) prayers I know by heart." But 20 years away from the Tridentine Mass forced him to read Latin responses from an old missal.

The Rev. John Engler, pastor emeritus of St. Elizabeth's church in Whitehall Township, celebrated the Dec. 24 Mass. And Immaculate Conception will be inviting other priests to celebrate it, Dagle said.

Altar boys Matthew Feichtel and Kevin Gallagher, neither of whom was alive when the Tridentine Mass was the church standard, read their Latin from altar server books published years ago, Dagle said.

Feichtel and Gallagher were trained in the old liturgy for six weeks. But, unlike altar boys of the past, they were not expected to memorize the Latin responses because the Mass is celebrated only once a month, Dagle said.

The Tridentine Mass is celebrated at Immaculate Conception at noon on the fourth Sunday and at the St. Paul's at 11 a.m. on the second Sunday of every month.